Antibiotic resistant "superbugs" pose a "catastrophic threat" as untreatable infections may prove lethal, Britain's top health official warned in a new report published Monday.

Interaction of MRSA (green bacteria) with a human white cell. The
bacteria shown is strain MRSA252, a leading cause of hospital-associated
infections in the United States and United Kingdom. (Photo: NIAID via
Flickr)"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic
threat. If we don't act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20
years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that
can't be treated by antibiotics," cautioned Sally Davies, England's
chief medical officer.

"Routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection," she added.

The pervasiveness of antibiotics—due to over-prescription, the systemic abuse of
the drugs in industrial food supplies and subsequent leaching into the
environment—is causing increased resistance, challenging bacteria to
mutate and leaving current drugs ineffective against these new bacterial
diseases.

Davis' statement comes less than a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)announced an alarming rise in antibiotic resistant, deadly "nightmare bacteria," carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).

The Guardianreports,
"there has been an alarming increase in other types of bacteria
including new strains of E coli and Klebsiella, which causes pneumonia."

One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill
around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far more than HIV
and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.

And others are spreading. Cases of totally drug resistant
tuberculosis have appeared in recent years and a new wave of "super
superbugs" with a mutation called NDM 1, which first emerged in India,
has now turned up all over the world, from Britain to New Zealand.

Last year the WHO said untreatable superbug strains of gonorrhoea were spreading across the world.

During her statement, Davies calls for international "anti-biotic
stewardship," which includes increased surveillance of drug-resistant
superbugs, prescribing fewer antibiotics and making sure they are only
prescribed when needed. She added that, with no new antibiotics in the
"pipeline," there is an urgent need for research and development to fill
a drug "discovery void," to counter the swift rise of these emerging,
mutating infections.